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class. So if there's anything I've forgotten, something I might leave out—well, just tell me anything that comes into your mind."
    Mr. Keretsky sipped his coffee and wrinkled his forehead into furrows. Caroline was familiar with his way of thinking; she had watched him do it before, and she had watched her brother, J.P., think in the same way. Their brains were like computers.
    She watched while Gregor Keretsky fed the topic "Tyrannosaurus Rex" into his brain, and the computer whirred, picking out bits of information, while his forehead crinkled into ridges. In a minute, she knew, he would open his mouth and the information would come out in an orderly list. She waited. She lapped at a spoonful of ice cream.
    "Tyrannosaurus Rex," he said suddenly, and his brow smoothed, "lived seventy million years ago, in the western part of North America—"
    "Des Moines?" asked Caroline, with her mouth full.
    But Mr. Keretsky shook his head. "More farther west," he said. "But there was a slightly different form of Tyrannosaurus in Mongolia—"
    "No," interrupted Caroline. "Today I'm only interested in the American version." She figured that Frederick Fiske had probably descended from Americans.
    "He weighed about seven and a half tons," Mr.Keretsky went on.
    "Not anymore," Caroline murmured. "He's thin, now."
    Gregor Keretsky didn't hear her. He was still whirring information from his computer brain to his mouth.
    "Twenty feet tall," he said. "That would be—" He looked around the cafeteria and up to the ceiling, measuring the distance with his eyes.
    "—about three basketball players standing on top of each other," Caroline suggested.
    Mr. Keretsky's computer shut down. He laughed and looked at her in surprise. "It would?" he asked. "Never before have I thought of that analogy. I do not know basketball well. I have seen games, of course, on television, but somehow they have no enjoyment for me." Suddenly he looked downcast. He sipped his coffee again.
    "I know, Mr. Keretsky," said Caroline sympathetically. "I understand."
    "I cannot tell who is winning, Caroline," he whispered across the table, "or which player belongs to which team. To me their uniforms are all gray."
    Caroline tried very hard to think of something comforting to say to someone who could see only gray. "Mr. Keretsky," she said, "just think how much you're able to enjoy elephants!"
    He nodded grudgingly. "That is true," he acknowledged. "I do enjoy elephants." But he continued to look mournful.
    "Also, your hair is gray," Caroline pointed out. "It's really a very nice color."
    Gregor Keretsky smoothed his hair with one hand. "Is it?" he asked, blushing. "Thank you, Caroline. You cheer me up always."
    Caroline ate the last melted bits of ice cream in her bowl and leaned forward. "Mr. Keretsky," she asked in a serious voice, "do you think it's possible that there might still be some dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus Rex around?"
    "Caroline, my little paleontologist," Gregor Keretsky scolded her, "you should know the answer to that question. You have only to look at the alligator. The great Galápagos tortoise. The iguana. Even my friend the elephant—"
    "I didn't mean them, exactly." Caroline stopped to think for a second. What she meant, actually, was a little hard to explain. "I mean something that has evolved so that it seems almost human. So that if it was wearing, say, a business suit, you wouldn't be able to tell it from a lawyer or a college professor."
    Gregor Keretsky drained the last of his coffee, laughing. He hadn't taken her seriously. "Caroline," he
said with a chuckle, "these lawyers, these professors. They all look alike in their—what did you call them?—business suits. But I think they are not dinosaurs, certainly."
    "Right." She smiled, and decided to change the subject. It was too soon to introduce the Tate Theory to Gregor Keretsky. She would have to wait until she had more proof.
    "I gotta go," she said, standing up and